As mere mortals in the USA, our aging population is very concerned getting old. Sales of anti-aging creams, longevity supplements, and biohacking methods are all the rage these days. But what if the basics aren’t so complicated? What if graceful aging just begins in your salad bowl? Don’t have a salad bowl? Maybe you should change that, like now, today.
Here’s why. Recent scientific studies are revealing that plant-based diets might not just make you feel better today, but they might actually help slow down the aging process at the deepest cellular level. Results from everything from longer telomeres (those are the protective caps on your DNA), to reduced inflammation, and even epigenetic changes in your DNA indicate that plant-based diets are beneficial for graceful aging.
The evidence keeps mounting up. So, in this article, let's dive into two newer studies that show this connection very well. One is from Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who is familiar to many of you, and the other study is from Christopher Gardner, a well-known researcher for doing balanced, honest diet studies. He asks great questions. Both of these researchers corroborated with a team of scientists at TruDiagnostics to find some excellent results.
The Fuhrman Aging Study: Women on Long-Term Nutritarian Diet versus SAD Diet
Dr. Joel Fuhrman's "nutritarian diet" emphasizes nutrient-dense plant-based foods. He has an acronym called GBOMBS, which stands for:
- Greens
- Beans
- Onions
- Mushrooms
- Berries
- Seeds
Dr. Fuhrman’s health equation is H = N/C, where N is nutrients and C is calories, and H is health. The nutritarian diet tries to maximize health with this equation: getting as many nutrients in for as few calories as possible.
In a retrospective study published in October 2024, researchers with Dr. Joel Fuhrman compared 48 women who followed the Nutritarian diet for at least 5 years to 49 women who followed the Standard American Diet (SAD). The result was that the Nutritarian group had significantly slower epigenetic aging, as measured by advanced Dunedin-PACE Clock. This tool gauges how fast your body is biologically aging—basically, the pace of aging based on DNA methylation patterns. So the nutritarian group had a lower rate of aging than the women on the SAD diet.
You can actually look up the Rejuvenation Olympics that are based on the Dunedin-PACE Clock. There's a leaderboard with a list of the top practitioners for slowing aging—with Bryan Johnson typically being at the top of the list.
(He's spending a ton of money having his own research team perfect his diet and supplement regimen, showing what is possible for human beings in slowing aging. You can find that leaderboard over at rejuvenationolympics.com, sponsored by TruDiagnostics, a company that specializes in epigenetic DNA testing.)
Anyways, the Dunedin-PACE is one of the tests that was used to measure aging rate in the nutritarian diet and the sad diet comparison. In addition to slower aging, they had several markers that indicated they had less inflammation in their bodies, including a shift in immune cell profiles that indicated a calmer internal environment. The nutritarian diet pattern was also shown to have lower inflammatory potential compared to the SAD diet.
Even with these good results, the study did have a couple flaws.
One of the biggest flaws was that the groups weren't matched for body mass index. A lower BMI could have a benefit for slowing down aging all by itself. But it was hard to find people on the SAD diet who matched the BMI of people who are healthy, truly healthy. They limited the BMI to less than 30 kg/m2 in the SAD diet group, but there was still a big difference.
A second drawback was that this was a retrospective study that relied on self-reporting of women’s dietary habits over the previous five years. So it doesn't prove causation of the results and slowing aging, but it does show an association.
Even with these drawbacks this study is pretty compelling evidence from real-life people. It didn't come from a controlled lab setting at all, and it gives great insights into mostly vegan diets and longevity.
The TwiNS Aging Study: Identical Twins Put Vegan vs. Omnivore to the Test
While Dr. Fuhrman was working on his study, Professor Christopher Gardner and his research group at Stanford University were working on a similar kind of anti-aging study (also with TruDiagnostics) but using a different group with better controls—a group of identical twins. This was the twins nutrition study (TwiNS).
In this randomized control trial, 21 pairs of identical twins were compared in an 8-week diet change. One of each set of twins ate a healthy omnivorous diet, including moderate amounts of meat, eggs, and dairy, and the other set of twins ate a healthy vegan diet. The researchers provided dietary guidance throughout the eight-week period. Using twins was genius because it took out the factor of genetic differences between the two groups.
The vegan group saw small but statistically significant improvements in several markers of aging. Epigenetic clocks like PC GrimAge (a predictor of lifespan and healthspan) dropped by about 0.3 years (p=0.033), PC PhenoAge by 0.78 years (p=0.014), and DunedinPACE by 0.03 units (p=0.00061)—all pointing to slower biological aging. They also had reductions across five of eleven key biological systems: inflammation, heart, hormone, liver, and metabolism (all p<0.05). Telomere length, measured directly via qPCR, increased slightly (p=0.045) (a great sign for a 8-week intervention), while inflammation markers like epigenetic CRP proxies decreased.
In contrast to the vegan group, the omnivore group of twins didn't have any significant changes in any of these epigenetic or aging markers (all p>0.05). The differences between the vegan and omnivorous diet were seen even though both diets were "healthy". The vegan diet did have more polyphenols, a greater amount of antioxidants, and slightly fewer calories on the vegan diet (about 200 fewer kcal/day). They also lost a little bit more weight (2 kg extra weight loss) than the omnivorous group.
With those caveats, you can see that the vegan diet was beneficial, even in just two months. Your diet can quickly influence your cellular aging. It would be great to do a longer study, like 2 years long, where weight loss wouldn’t be such a big factor. But that is a big ask for people to do, and students conducting the studies have to graduate and move on. But still, it would be nice.
Why Does This Matter? Beyond the Cellular Clock to Real-Life Longevity
So why do these results matter? Well, increased chronological age and increased biological age are the principal factors for getting a disease, any disease.
If you can lower your biological age compared to your chronological age, your body is actually younger than your years indicate. This means your risk for disease—all diseases—is lower. And any intervention that slows down your biological age, automatically lowers your risk of all diseases.
These two studies point out that eating more plants does indeed help lower your biological age. And these studies join a host of other studies that have already shown in populations that people who follow vegetarian and vegan diets have lower risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes. One recent large review can be found here.
Build a Holistic Plant-Based Lifestyle for Great Longevity Results
Of course, slowing down aging and improving your health is not just about diet. You still have to improve your body's strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular fitness. You have to work on getting great sleep and relieving stress in your life. Rest and recovery is a big deal as you get older. And you have to be smart about taking supplements so you fill in those nutrient gaps both for vitamins, minerals, and hormones that you may be lacking as you get older.
But if you want to add more vitality to your years, going more plant-based seems like a smart thing to do. It's backed up by a lot of evidence. So what step are you going to take today to move towards a more plant-based diet?
